Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Washington Black, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Freedom vs. Captivity
Racism, Humanity, and Cruelty
Journeying and the Past
Family, Love, and Pain
Art, Science, and Curiosity
Summary
Analysis
Later, Tanna and Wash lie naked in their room in Haarlem. Kissing Tanna, Wash says he admires her lack of adornment—that she only uses small things to augment her beauty so that her actual features shine through. She says that she often begged Goff to let her wear jewels and makeup and fashionable dresses growing up. And when he finally let her, she looked breathtaking. But she also noticed people staring at her constantly, and she felt that she disappeared as a person. She got a reputation for being stupid or silly. Wash teases her, saying now she is silly and plain.
Tanna’s story illustrates how other people look down on her for her mixed-race identity. But people also discriminate against and dehumanize her because she is a woman. She suggests here that the more she emphasized her beauty, the more people looked at her as an object rather than as a human being with intelligence and value.
Themes
As Wash lies back, Tanna says that Peter’s story had the opposite effect than the one intended on her—she kept thinking that the poor Tahitians had to deal with being shot at, and the strange Englishmen with their frightening tools. Only half listening, Wash wonders what drew Titch to Morocco, and Tanna points out that Wash has become obsessed with Titch, even mistaking strangers for him. She says she thought Wash’s obsession was about finding Wash’s origins, but they did that at the Abolitionist Society. She asks him why he hunts for Titch. Wash is flooded with anxiety, but he feels a striving that he can’t stop.
While Tanna points out the bias in Peter’s story—prioritizing his perspective over the Tahitians’—she, too, frames the story in a racially biased way, as though the “poor” Tahitians were not able to hold their own against the Englishmen’s “frightening” tools. At the same, noting that Wash is dwelling on finding Titch, Tanna struggles to understand what keeps drawing Wash to Titch. The fact that Wash can’t fully explain himself only emphasizes how even though he recognizes that his journey might be futile, he feels compelled to confront his past—it is unavoidable.
Themes
Tanna asks if Wash is running away from her and Goff because Wash feels that her father stole his idea. Wash admits that he spent a year working out the science of it, and it won’t bring him anything in the end—his name will be nowhere. She asks if it’s a question of his name, and he admits no. He thinks that the project was a testament to his contributions, but now he’s not sure that his existence has been truly meaningful.
Wash’s thoughts here illustrate that his past pain has become so unavoidable that it is even preventing him from being able to find meaning or purpose in his present life, because he feels he isn’t yet able to understand how or why Titch chose him and then abandoned him.
Themes
Tanna tells Wash softly of her Uncle Sunshine, who was very morose and delighted in his misery. When her grandmother died, she left him 300 pounds, and he used the money to buy himself a gravestone for the family plot, and he would leave flowers on it and visit it every day. Once, he left Portuguese figs that Tanna and Goff brought back—she wanted him to taste those figs, but they went onto the grave. When he finally died, it was more like a homecoming. After a pause, she says that she will go with Wash to Morocco. Exhausted, Wash falls asleep, reaching out for her fingers.
Tanna’s story about her “Uncle Sunshine” highlights the dangers in being so caught up in the future that he forgot to live—like paying tribute to his future death rather than getting to taste the figs. Likewise, Wash has become so obsessed with his past that he is forgetting to live in the present, wasting a great deal of time traveling the world rather than appreciating the life and the family that he has in front of him.
Themes
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